11-11-2015, 08:57 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-12-2015, 11:04 PM by Kingslay.)
(10-12-2015, 04:20 PM)Kingslay Wrote:  KINGSLAY
He is not a quiet creature anymore.
The smoke gives him away, as do the fires he sets in his wake. He is no better at controlling them than he was in the beginning, when the flames ate him alive and left behind the hellish monster he deserved to be, but he has never been very adept at self-control. Today, he is wandering the edges of her city, feeling the inevitable curl of a hunger he cannot satiate knotting in his gut. The beast is always hungry, but today it salivates for her.
Straia.
Straia.
Straia.
He hears her name sung through the vessels in his bloodstream, and the melody is sweet. He feels the creature in his belly gnawing on his xylophone ribs, and he ignores the hundreds of the living that he passes because he only wants the one.
Straia.
He sets the trees on fire. He sets the earth and the brush alight. The flames burn white-hot, and she is sure to smother them into ash but the task itself is sure to bring her forward – and when at last he finds her, beautiful and awful, the subtle curl of a smile will find his wicked lips.
“Liar,” he will sing then between his teeth, and he is close, too close – so close that she’ll feel the heat of his breath in her ear. He doesn’t know why he’s angry, but only that he is. He doesn’t know why the syllables he breathes are venomous, only that they are. He doesn’t know why he hears the thrum of her pulse above the static in the air, but he does. It makes his skin roll and prickle as a shudder runs underneath his flesh and through his bones.
He doesn’t know why he’s angry, but she will.
She’ll know that he found Etro under the shadow-wings of a raven flying overhead, just as she said he would. She’ll know that it wasn’t the same. She’ll k now that it was wrought with something he could not recognize, something he cannot recognize still.
That the girl was not what he left behind.
Straia will know that Etro was not the plain-faced child with stars in her eyes. That she was not the lanky youth he left behind in clouds of billowing smoke, that she did not harbor the same set of hips that he watched disintegrate into the distance once. She will know that once he saw something inside of her that made him quiet. She will know that once Etro did not hold a pitchfork in her hand. She will know that once she did not fear him. Once, she did not wonder if he would slit her throat and bleed her into the earth.
And then she ran.
And then he left.
And it was different.
And she might have loved him.
And he might have killed her.
And Straia will know.
Straia will know that Etro smelled like someone else.
And so, he made the Gods themselves bend at the knee.
 i am sorry this reply is like 4 months overdue
i want the world in my hands
i am the violence in the pouring rain i am a hurricane Of course she douses the flames. She doesn’t even have to think about it, honestly. The ravens have become an extension of her so thoroughly now that they simply turn to water on their own and descend, smothering the flames as quickly as he sets them. Her kingdom has burned too many times, and it would likely burn again. She would try to save it from that fate, but Beqanna clambered for war, the Chamber clambered for power. And she would give it to them all, but there was always a price. The trees, the mist. They could be the ones to pay the price. Like they always have. Like they always will.
She watches him through the eyes of her ravens. There are many above him now, not all water. Some simply follow him, watch him, and he’ll know it’s her. But he lets her come to her anyway, lets him stalk through the kingdom lighting it on fire with his anger. In some ways, he reminds her of the child she once was. Petulant, expecting one thing and getting another. But Kingslay doesn’t change, doesn’t seem to grow or age or be anything other than exactly what he is, and so the child-like anger does not surprise her. Does not bother her. She can quell the fire, and that is the important point.
There is some ash in the air now. Bits of the land are charred, but this is normal in the Chamber. The ash that settles on her back feels normal, feels like home. And finally, he finds her, clues of his path to her evident in the landscape. The word hangs between them for a moment while she simply looks at him, though her own eyes now. “Of course I am. But not about this. I never once promised you she’d stay the same. I do not control her.”
And of course, this is true. Straia does not control the world like a full magician can. Straia can only send her ravens to do her bidding. She can find the girl. She can perhaps steal the girl (though getting around Yael would be tricky). But she cannot make the girl stay a naïve, innocent girl. “You cannot honestly tell me you didn’t expect her to grow up. You are smarter than that, even if you don’t admit it to yourself.”
Clearly, his anger doesn’t phase her. She is surrounded by monsters, after all. She is a queen of so many creatures, and she has quickly learned how to handle them all. As best as monsters can be handled of course, which isn’t terribly well. “We are not the type to be loved, Kingslay. We are the type to take what we want, but do not expect your feelings to be returned. Remember what we are. Everyone else does.” She gestures to the bits of destruction left in his wake. This is what everyone else sees when they look at him. At her. They see destruction and pain and death. Because that is what horses like Kingslay and Straia bring. In different ways, but in the end, it’s all the same. straia the raven queen of the chamber 
11-14-2015, 01:53 AM
(This post was last modified: 11-14-2015, 01:54 AM by Kingslay.)
(10-12-2015, 04:20 PM)Kingslay Wrote: KINGSLAY
The ash is falling around them like snow; bright, and paper-thin, far too light for the laws of gravity, and so it wafts to and fro on the wind until it settles between the lengths of their dark eyelashes and along the mountainous ridges of their spines. Here and there it coats the earth is patches, is sucked into their lungs as they inhale and exhale in unison. Kingslay does not fight the death of his fire though, instead he sits back on his heels as the ash and smoke blankets them from the prying eyes of all the bodies he did not want.
“Liar,” he says, but the word is lost to the smoke and the cacophonous echo of the ravens wings and bellows.
Liar, because she promised her to him. Liar, because she reeked of betrayal – because she reeked of the living, of him. ‘Liar,’ he breathes against the skin of her ear, and she is not startled or breathless. He cannot feel the thrum of her heart quicken. He cannot smell the sweat on her skin, or taste it as it mingles with the flavor of soot and ash on his tongue. He should not be surprised. He had known that she would know.
He had known that she would blink up at him with her dark eyes, and she does, and had he been thinking of more than the crippling hunger writhing in his gut he might have noticed how she reminded him of the witches, the ones that kissed him with the dirtied ends of their curling, jagged fingernails, the ones that carved trenches through his flesh when he had blood to bleed. Had he thought beyond the need for the iron tang of blood on his lips he might have realized that she reminded him of that night when it was all stripped away – flesh and bone and fat and gristle. He might have known that she reminded him of magic murmurs in the depths of ancient dark forests – that she was wicked, too.
But instead of realizations he listens to the thrum of her pulse. “We are not the type to be loved, Kingslay,” she says, and he focuses on the way the syllables sound on her tongue, and he wonders if they will ever sound like the way they did in Etro’s mouth. He blinks, and sees the maggots in her eyes. He blinks, and sees the skin fall away and expose the rot of innards and muscle. He blinks, and the ash and smoke curl around their too-close bodies and he wonders what she might look like alight. Liar.
“Remember what we are,” she says, and he simmers in silence and remembers the way their eyes burned holes through his flesh and bone, the wide berth they yielded him in the meadow.
“Everyone else does.”
“Fix it.” He says, and the ravens catch fire. They spiral to the chamber floor in plumes of billowing smoke and burning feathers. Their screams are jarring, discordant, but Straia will not mind. They are monsters after all.
And so, he made the Gods themselves bend at the knee.
ignore the raven part if straia is not cool with that, which is fair  also feel free to douse him in water or something embarrassing
i want the world in my hands
i am the violence in the pouring rain i am a hurricane Her hands are clean. Blood does not stain them. She never set foot in the Gates, though she watched through the eyes of her ravens. She didn’t kill the wayward girl that Gryffen brought back, though she watched with unblinking eyes as the blood drained from the girl at Cellar’s touch. She didn’t rape the Gates Queen, though she never sent a raven to stop it.
Oh, her hands are clean. But that’s part of the mask she wears. Like Weed, she is beautiful on the outside. Head high, something wild laced into her beauty. Her mane falls haphazardly on either side of her neck, long and tangled, though she purposefully leaves it this way. The effect is simply that she doesn’t care, doesn’t try. She lets the ash settle on her, doesn’t mind as it streaks black against her white coat. But of course, she knows exactly what she looks like. A Queen. Power and beauty all rolled into one. But beautiful, unlike her insides.
Her heart is black. Of course it is, with Rodrik as a father. Her own father was nothing but a rotting, walking corpse with his own personal vendetta’s. She was not so cruel, did nothing that at least the majority of the Chamber did not condone, and kept no secrets from them (except a few, and only because they were necessary). But still, she was her father’s daughter. She would give him the girl, but she would feel no remorse that the girl does not want him. That was never part of the bargain, and it is far outside of her control.
She laughs at his words now as the ravens are set on fire. They cry, but their cries are short lived. It doesn’t take them long for their feathers to embrace the flames, for their blood to turn to lava. They become the fire, and leave the ground with wings alight and spread wide. One settles on Kingslay’s back, perching there with a caw. The rest take to the skies, disappear into the clouds.
“You left her, Kingslay. What was she supposed to do? Sit around and wait for you?” Her words are not meant to be harsh, but she sugar coats nothing. Never has. Never will. He may call her a liar, but she is not. She never promised the girl wouldn’t change.
“And I cannot make her love you. You’ll need Eight for that, and his prices are higher than mine. All I can offer you is the chance to burn the world. There will lightly be a war, and you can lead the way with burn down every piece of Beqanna if you want.” What other answer can a monster provide. In the end, there is only destruction. straia the raven queen of the chamber
 Use of mild power playing is allowed; no injuries without permission
(10-12-2015, 04:20 PM)Kingslay Wrote: KINGSLAY
The ravens are falling.
They lose black feathers like ash after the eruption, but they don’t end. They don’t sizzle, or crack, and the heat and flames do not eat them up – instead, they come alive with it, with fire. They breathe the orange and red through their lungs. They run hot with fire they harbor in their veins. The putrid stink of burning flesh escapes him because there is no flesh left to burn. There is only fire. There is only smoke. There is only magic and ego. But she doesn’t know what he is. She does not hear the threat coiling like a venomous snake at the back of his throat.
She doesn’t know.
She doesn’t know.
She doesn’t know that he could hold her eyes in the crook of his jaws, between his teeth – that he could press until the ooze wept softly on his tongue. She doesn’t know that he could bleed her out until nothing is left but red, weeping earth and a scream that runs so deep it will echo pitches through the eyelets in the leaves of the trees around them. She doesn’t know that he knows what she looks like inside out, that he could draw out her veins and her tendons in the dirt with eyes shut tight against the tops of his cheeks.
But he could show her.
He could show her, and it would be the last thing she ever knows.
He wants to. The creature in his belly is curling through his innards, purring and growling against his organs. It wants food. It wants to be placated. It wants flesh, and bones, and yellowed-fat. It wants boiling blood, and charred flesh. It wants. It wants. Kingslay feels the acidic saliva drip off the creature’s fangs and burn holes through his insides. He could show her.
Instead he swallows his hunger. Instead he listens to her coo about the war she will bring, the flesh that she will feed him with instead, and he pretends not to see all the seams in her flesh, all the ways she can be undone. Instead, he holds the flesh of his cheek between his teeth until the meat bleeds. Instead, he focuses on the metallic tang of iron his tongue and tells himself he needs her still.
He needs her still.
He needs her still.
He needs her still, but it isn’t for her wicked beauty. He does not see the slant of her hips, or the ogee curve in her face. He does not hear the cadence in her voice. It’s not why she’s alive. He hears the thrum of her pulse in his ears and it sounds volcanic. He sees the ash settle on the ridge of her spine and wonders how blood would look in its place. It’s not why she’s alive.
He needs her still, and in the end it will be enough.
In the end the flames will settle on his skin, and his dark eyes will steady instead of rolling white and wild in his head. He doesn’t need to agree to do her bidding. She’ll know. She always know.
“Eight,” he breathes against her ear, and she’ll know.
And so, he made the Gods themselves bend at the knee.
i want the world in my hands
i am the violence in the pouring rain i am a hurricane There is so much the two do not know about each other. But she is no fool. She keeps company with monsters and demons and corpses. She never underestimates what they are capable of, never believes for a second that they won’t turn on her when the moment is right. Of course they will. Perhaps for her crown. For now, the world seems content to let her keep it, but she knows if she takes the war one step too far, if she antagonizes one wrong person, it will no longer be hers. Perhaps, like Kingslay, because she simply looks like food.
In the end, the reason doesn’t matter. In the end, she simply needs to keep the upper hand.
Being quick and clever often gives her the tools she needs. Her ravens give her knowledge no one else can have, they give her power to keep fighting, they give others reasons to leave her be. But her deepest secret is the real weapon, the upper hand on almost anyone. See, she can simply stop your heart. It’s terribly hard to kill someone when your heart no longer beats.
There’s a reason no one knows this. Not her kingdom. Not her son. Not Weed. Not even Oksana.
But of course, she almost always has the upper hand. She has more bargaining chips then Kingslay alone, though Eight might simply want the fiery boy as his own toy. It’s entirely possible, though in the end, it doesn’t matter to Straia. Eight and her were on the same side. “He’s in the Valley,” she says after her breaths the name into her ear. “He’ll come when you call. You might do better without me, but I’ll come if that proves to be wrong.”
On cue, one of the fire ravens flies low, hovering near Kingslay. It would follow, and she would know if she was needed. straia the raven queen of the chamber
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